Safety Sofie

What does Safety Sofie do?

Our employees receive thorough safety training right from day one in any case, and we familiarise them with our stringent safety requirements before they put so much as one foot on a work site. But to know is not the same as to do. With Safety Sofie we go a step further. Via a monthly calendar campaign, Safety Sofie draws attention to a new safety theme every time and encourages our people to actually put it into practice. We also have red-lip stickers, as areward for working safely, lanyards, attractive cards with safety tips that we hand out to our workers and customers, and so on. Sofie isn’t just the face of our campaign: she’s also a real flesh-and-blood lady who regularly shows up onwork sites. During her site visits, she once again personally draws attention to the various safety themes and rewards safe behaviour with sticker kisses. You can be sure that our men are all ears for what she has to say.

Healthy competition

The workers can earn points with safe behaviour. These are known as ‘kisses from Safety Sofie’. The saved up kisses can be exchanged for all kinds of PPE – personal protective equipment – and other great incentives from the online Safety Sofie shop. Each site also works as a team to win as many kisses as possible, giving rise to healthy competition between the different sites. Not surprisingly, the website www.safetysofie.be receives plenty of visits. On it, workers can follow their ranking compared with that of their colleagues, both individually and as a team.

Risqué

Safety Sofie was launched in August 2010. The launch was coupled with a big kick-off and a roadshow which went round different customers. The first reactions were rather mixed, ranging from ‘risqué’, and ‘anti-women’ to real ‘oh my goodness’ reactions. But when the results turned up and people became familiar with the approach, all the feedback we received was extremely positive. The result is that safe behaviour has become self-evident for everyone in the company. We no longer see any scaffolders working at a height without a safety line attached. And everyone usually wears safety goggles of their own accord and draws colleagues’ attention to unsafe behaviour. They’re little things, but they are contributing to a significant fall in the number of safety incidents. And customers are now also letting us know that they are seeing the effects of the Safety Sofie campaign in practice. There arecustomers who even follow the rankings, because if their site wins it gives them a boost too. Besure to also take a look at http://safetysofie.be/fr